In a possible legal showdown over multitouch patents between Apple and Palm, the Cupertino gadget maker has just looted a decent weapon off the dead body that is the US patent system: a patent on just about all multitouch gestures used in the iPhone and iPod Touch, such as swiping, pinching, and so on. Wielding this weapon, Apple suddenly has a pretty good case against Palm.

· A vision based system that tracked the hands and enabled multiple fingers, hands, and people to interact using a rich set of gestures.
· Implemented in a number of configurations, including table and wall.
· Didn’t sense touch, per se, so largely relied on dwell time to trigger events intended by the pose.
· Essentially “wrote the book” in terms of unencumbered (i.e., no gloves, mice, styli, etc.) rich gestural interaction. Work that was more than a decade ahead of its time and hugely influential, yet not as acknowledged as it should be.
· Krueger, Myron, W. (1983). Artificial Reality. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
· Krueger, Myron, W. (1991). Artificial Reality II. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
· Krueger, Myron, W., Gionfriddo, Thomas., & Hinrichsen, Katrin (1985). VIDEOPLACE - An Artificial Reality, Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’85), 35 - 40."